1. (and i imagine... (XII) - written by e.e. cummings
Read 31454 times on American Poems.

(and i imagine
never mind Joe agreeably cheerfully remarked when
surrounded by fat stupid animals
the Jewess shrieked
the messiah tumbled successfully into the world
the animals continued eating. And i imagine she, and
heard them slobber and
in the... (Read full poem)

My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who... (Read full poem)

3. Autobiographia Literaria - written by Frank O\'Hara
Read 3212 times on American Poems.

When I was a child
I played by myself in a 
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds 
flew away.

If anyone was looking 
for me I hid behind a 
tree and cried out "I am
an... (Read full poem)

The garden admires you.
For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,
The ecstatic reds of the roses,
So that you will come to it with your lovers.

And the willows--
See how it has shaped these green
Tents of silence. Yet
There is... (Read full poem)

5. Whenever I Go There - written by W.S. Merwin
Read 1027 times on American Poems.

Whenever I go there everything is changed

The stamps on the bandages the titles
Of the professors of water

The portrait of Glare the reasons for
The white mourning

In new rocks new insects are sitting
With the lights off
And once more I remember... (Read full poem)

The door of winter
is frozen shut, 

and like the bodies
of long extinct animals, cars 

lie abandoned wherever
the cold road has taken them. 

How ceremonious snow is,
with what quiet severity 

it turns even death to a formal
arrangement. 

Alone... (Read full poem)

7. The wind drew off - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1872 times on American Poems.

The wind drew off
Like hungry dogs
Defeated of a bone --
Through fissures in
Volcanic cloud
The yellow lightning shone --
The trees held up
Their mangled limbs
Like animals in pain --
When Nature falls upon herself
Beware an Austrian.(Read full poem)

—for Mama

remember this.
she is standing by
the furnace.
the coals
glisten like rubies.
her hand is crying.
her hand is clutching
a sheaf of papers.
poems.
she gives them up.
they burn
jewels into jewels.
her eyes are animals.
each... (Read full poem)

9. Poem in praise of menstruation - written by Lucille Clifton
Read 2101 times on American Poems.

if there is a river 
more beautiful than this 
bright as the blood 
red edge of the moon if 
there is a river 
more faithful than this 
returning each month 
to the same delta if there

is a river 
braver than this 
coming and coming in a... (Read full poem)

Flaubert wanted to write a novel
About nothing. It was to have no subject
And be sustained upon the style alone,
Like the Holy Ghost cruising above
The abyss, or like the little animals
In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch
That breaks, but do... (Read full poem)

11. January 3 - written by David Lehman
Read 502 times on American Poems.

The shrink says, "Everything depends
on how many stuffed animals you had
as a boy," and my mother tells me my
father was left-handed and so is my son
and they're both named Joe whose favorite 
stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart
while I, the... (Read full poem)

They enter as animals from the outer
Space of holly where spikes
Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,
But greenness, darkness so pure
They freeze and are.

O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid... (Read full poem)

13. The First Dream - written by Billy Collins
Read 5519 times on American Poems.

The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of... (Read full poem)

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod... (Read full poem)

15. Dream Song 47: April Fool's Day, or, St Mary of Egypt - written by John Berryman
From 77 Dream Songs. Published in 1964. Read 1024 times on American Poems.

—Thass a funny title, Mr Bones.
—When down she saw her feet, sweet fish, on the threshold,
she considered her fair shoulders
and all them hundreds who have them, all
the more who to her mime thickened & maled
from the supple... (Read full poem)

ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, 
Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things, 
Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they, 
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less... (Read full poem)

17. "Gay" is the captivating cognomen - written by e.e. cummings
Read 51170 times on American Poems.

"Gay" is the captivating cognomen of a Young Woman of cambridge,
mass.
to whom nobody seems to have mentioned ye olde freudian wish;
when i contemplate her uneyes safely ensconced in thick glass
you try if we are a gentleman not to think of(sh)

the... (Read full poem)

It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.

I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white... (Read full poem)

19. Desert Places - written by Robert Frost
From A Further Range. Published in 1936. Read 25239 times on American Poems.

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in... (Read full poem)

I'm tired of murdering children.
Once, long ago today, they wanted to live;
now I feel Vietnam the place
where rigor mortis is beginning to set-in upon me.

I force silence down the throats of mutes,
down the throats of mating-cries of animals who... (Read full poem)

21. Feeling Fucked Up - written by Etheridge Knight
Read 2391 times on American Poems.

Lord she's gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and... (Read full poem)

I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman's... (Read full poem)

23. Balloons - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1963. Read 8757 times on American Poems.

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,
Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk

Invisible air drifts,
Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow... (Read full poem)

When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story
window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had... (Read full poem)

25. Mediums. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 3054 times on American Poems.

THEY shall arise in the States, 
They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness; 
They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos; 
They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive; 
They shall be complete women and men—their pose brawny... (Read full poem)